It's become an epidemic in the world of low-budget horror movies. Someone has access to an abandoned buildings, a video camera, and the kernel of an idea, so they decide to make a movie. I can't tell you how many of these cinematic abominations I've had to sit through, and they are always the same -- a group of dumb characters walk around a dilapidated house/building while something/someone stalks them. The movies are always dark and the audience can't help but wonder what the characters are doing in this awful place to begin with. Sometimes the buildings look condemned, and not only does this add to the low-budget feel of the movie, it makes us wonder how safe the actors were. These movies have become so prevalent that I can't help but wonder if there's a blueprint for them. And if there is, Splintered clearly studied it.

Splintered opens with five friends (although they act like they can't stand one another) traveling through the English countryside. Sam (Sacha Dhawan), Jane (Sadie Pickering), Dean (Jonathan Readwin) and John (Sol Heras) have agreed to accompany their friend Sophie (Holly Weston) to this area to investigate an animal attack. They set up camp and after Sophie is insulted by Sam, she flees into the forest with John in pursuit. The two find themselves in a large abandoned building where they are promptly attacked. Sophie awakens to find herself in a locked room. Her captor, Gavin (Stephen Walters), tells her that, for her own safety, she can't come out. The next morning, Sam, Dean, and Jane realize that Sophie and John are missing and go looking for them. Meanwhile, a priest, Father Thomas (Colin Tierney), arrives in the area, clearly ready to hunt for something.

It may not be the optimal way to watch movies, but as I consistently have a stack of discs to review, I rarely finish a movie in one sitting and often have two or three in rotation at one time. With Splintered, it took me three attempts to finish the movie. This had little to do with scheduling. It had to do with the fact that I would re-start the movie and realize that I had no idea what was going on. After making myself watch the movie all the way through at one time, I found out that I was experiencing this situation because nothing ever happens in Splintered.

I typically write purposely vague plot synopsis in my reviews as I hate spoilers and I try not to give anything away. This wasn't the case with Splintered -- everything that you read above is pretty much the entire movie. The five characters drive through the country, they camp, Sophie and John go to the building, they are attacked, John disappears and Sophie is locked in a room by Gavin, Sam and Jane go looking for Sophie and John, they find the building, they are attacked, Dean meets Father Thomas, they go to the building, they are attacked, the survivors escape. That's the movie. For most of the characters, there is zero background information on them. We keep seeing flashbacks of Sophie in a bed as a child, but we don't learn much about this. It's never made clear why Sophie has lead her friend into the woods to investigate an attack which is only hinted at in a news report. We learn a little bit about Gavin and Father Thomas, but not enough to shed any real light on the story. The movie wants to be clever, as it's full of imagery which is supposed to be metaphorical, but it's all a mess. Ironically, more of the story is revealed in a deleted ending which is included on the Disc, but even that fails to explain the motivations of any of the characters in the film or rationalize the movie's Friday the 13th-like action.

So, what are we left with? A bunch of scenes of people running around in the dark. It's truly shocking to think that it took three people to write this movie, as you would think that a trio of writers could come up with an actual story. Having made some short films, Splintered makes the feature-length debut of Co-writer/Director Simeon Halligan. Apparently he had no idea what to do with the extra time and the result is a movie which drags, displaying no suspense, tension, or scares. The red herrings lead nowhere, the twists are flaccid, and the finale is a groaner. Splintered begs the question, can we please see a moratorium on running around an abandoned building movies, please?

Splintered makes one wonder if the movie ever knew what it was supposed to be about on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Well Go USA. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 23 Mbps. The image is sharp and clear, showing no overt grain and no defects from the source material. The movie was shot in HD, so the image is nice and crisp during the daytime scenes. However, most of the movie takes place at night or in the dark building, and some of these scenes are just a hair too dark. The level of detail is good and the image never went sharp. The colors are good, most notably reds. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 2.3 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. For a low-budget film, this is an impressive track. The action in the building provides lots of opportunities for surround and stereo effects, and they sound fine here. These effects are nicely detailed and the speaker placement of the sounds perfectly matches the on-screen action. The attack scenes yield subwoofer effects which drive the action home.

The Splintered Blu-ray Disc contains a few extras. "Behind the Scenes" is a ten-part featurette, that does not have a "PLAY ALL" option, which explores many aspects of the movie. We hear from several members of the filmmaking team, as they discuss the look of the film, the effects, the technology involved in shooting the movie, the score, and props. We also get comments from the cast, who talk about their characters, and the director. The nice thing about these segments is that they focus on giving us information and forego showing a lot film clips. The Disc contains nine DELETED SCENES including two versions of an extended ending. This ending would not have helped the movie, as it only complicates things further. However, a few dialogue scenes actually do add more needed info at the beginning of the movie. We get to TEASERS for the film, as well as a TRAILER.